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 Memories in the Service of the
Hindu Nation
Memories in the Service of the Hindu Nation is based on 14 months of
ethnographic fieldwork in Delhi and its surroundings between 2017 and
2018 with Partition survivors from west Punjab and the North-West Frontier
Province. It locates the global rise of far-right nationalism within
globalisation and memories of victimhood. Focusing on Hindu nationalism
in India, this book is an important and timely contribution to the literature
on South Asian Partition Studies that shows how tragedy begets tragedy. It
tries to answer an urgent, provocative but nevertheless necessary question:
What does it mean to remember the Partition in the time of fascism?
The author shows what makes up cycles of violence by connecting the
reinscription of trauma in Partition memories to the self-serving justifications
of the contemporary violence of Hindu nationalism. It analyses how the
hegemony of Hindu nationalism has structured the narratives of Hindu
Partition survivors and recruited them in the service of a putative Hindu
nation.

Pranav Kohli teaches sociology at Maynooth University, Ireland. He is a

political anthropologist specialising in race, gender, conflict, authoritarianism
and memory with an abiding interest in their intersections with the politics
of health.
SOUTH ASIA IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

South Asia has become a laboratory for devising new institutions and
practices of modern social life. Forms of capitalist enterprise, providing
welfare and social services, the public role of religion, the management of
ethnic conflict, popular culture and mass democracy in the countries of the
region have shown a marked divergence from known patterns in other parts
of the world. South Asia is now being studied for its relevance to the general
theoretical understanding of modernity itself.
South Asia in the Social Sciences will feature books that offer innovative
research on contemporary South Asia. It will focus on the place of the region
in the various global disciplines of the social sciences and highlight research
that uses unconventional sources of information and novel research
methods. While recognising that most current research is focused on the
larger countries, the series will attempt to showcase research on the smaller
countries of the region.
General Editor
Partha Chatterjee
Columbia University
Editorial Board
Pranab Bardhan
University of California at Berkeley
Stuart Corbridge
Durham University
Satish Deshpande
University of Delhi
Christophe Jaffrelot
Centre d’etudes et de recherches internationales, Paris
Nivedita Menon
Jawaharlal Nehru University
Other books in the series:
Government as Practice: Democratic Left in a Transforming India
Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya
Courting the People: Public Interest Litigation in Post-Emergency India
Anuj Bhuwania
Development after Statism: Industrial Firms and the Political Economy of
South Asia
Adnan Naseemullah
Politics of the Poor: Negotiating Democracy in Contemporary India
Indrajit Roy
Nationalism, Development and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka
Rajesh Venugopal
South Asian Governmentalities: Michel Foucault and the Question of
Postcolonial Orderings
Stephen Legg and Deana Heath (eds.)
Adivasis and the State: Subalternity and Citizenship in India’s Bhil
Heartland
Alf Gunvald Nilsen
Maoist People’s War and the Revolution of Everyday Life in Nepal
Ina Zharkevich
New Perspectives on Pakistan’s Political Economy: State, Class and Social
Change
Matthew McCartney and S. Akbar Zaidi (eds.)
Crafty Oligarchs, Savvy Voters: Democracy under Inequality in Rural
Pakistan
Shandana Khan Mohmand
Dynamics of Caste and Law: Dalits, Oppression and Constitutional
Democracy in India
Dag-Erik Berg
Simultaneous Identities: Language, Education and the Nepali Nation
Uma Pradhan
Deceptive Majority: Dalits, Hinduism, and Underground Religion
Joel Lee
Colossus: The Anatomy of Delhi
Sanjoy Chakravorty and Neelanjan Sircar (eds.)
When Ideas Matter: Democracy and Corruption in India
Bilal A. Baloch
In Search of Home: Citizenship, Law and the Politics of the Poor
Kaveri Haritas
Bureaucratic Archaeology: State, Science, and Past in Postcolonial India
Ashish Avikunthak
Political Economy of the Development of Bangladesh
K. A. S. Murshid
An Uneasy Hegemony: Politics of State-building and Struggles for Justice in
Sri Lanka
Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits
Founding Mothers of the Indian Republic: Gender Politics of the Framing of
the Constitution
Achyut Chetan
Freedom in Captivity: Negotiations of Belonging along Kashmir’s Frontier
Radhika Gupta
Memories in the Service of
the Hindu Nation
The Afterlife of the Partition of India

Pranav Kohli
Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8EA, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot No. 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi 110025, India
103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467

Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment,

a department of the University of Cambridge.
We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of
education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009318686
© Pranav Kohli 2023
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions
of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take
place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment.

First published 2023

Printed in India
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-009-31868-6 Hardback
Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence
or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this
publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will
remain, accurate or appropriate.
 For my Nani, who carried the burden of a difficult past.

For my godson Anbu in the hope of an unburdened future.

 Contents

List of Figures xi
Acknowledgements xiii

Prologue: The Linguistic Context 1

Part I The Past and the Present

Introduction: Death and the Problem of Theodicy 9
1. Listening to Ancestors: Ethnography in a Milieu of Memory 57

Part II Sacrifice and Suffering: The Purusharth of Refugees

2. Stories of Purusharth91
3. A Story Half Told: The Moral and Political Claims of Purusharth116
4. Sacrifice and Hard Work: Martyrdom as Theodicy 128
5. The Purusharth of Women 153

Part III Remembrance and Healing: Reflections on the

Post-Partition Context
6. The Fractured Nomos191
7. Remembering Violence 218
8. Remembering Partition in the Time of Fascism 244
9. Healing, Victimhood and Ressentiment275
x Contents

Conclusion: Field Notes on Global Authoritarianism 293

Glossary 327
References 334
Index364
 Figures

1.1 Teen Murti Bhavan 73

1.2a The Gurdwara Shahidane Gujrat Train in Sector 5,
NIT, Faridabad 83
1.2b The Gurdwara Shahidane Gujrat Train in Sector 5,
NIT, Faridabad 83
5.1 The Usha-make sewing machine my grandaunt
Anjali’s family friends still possessed 162
5.2 My grandaunt’s sewing machine 165
5.3 The embossed panel on the machine that reads,
‘Tolaram Ramdass & Co., Post Box No. 130, Karachi’ 165
5.4 My mother’s photograph with the then prime minister
Indira Gandhi 182
6.1 The 1947 Partition Archive’s exhibition in Delhi’s
Kamladevi Complex, September 2017 196
6.2 Members of the public watch a montage of interview
snippets, at the exhibition 196
6.3 An excerpt from Promod Mehra’s oral testimony on
display at the exhibition 197
6.4 An excerpt from Thakar Daas Batheja’s oral testimony
at the 1947 Partition Archive’s exhibition 201
8.1 Screenshots of Hindu Right propaganda texts forwarded
by Gangaram 252
8.2 Screenshots of a forwarded text message from Gangaram 254
 Acknowledgements

There are a number of people to whom thanks are due. First and foremost,
to my mom: thank you for being the best sociological mom ever! You are
the best!
To Choti Nani and my family in Faridabad – Nani Masi, Tony mamu,
Poonam mami and Sagar bhaiya – thank you for taking care of me during
my fieldwork. None of this would have been possible without your
kindness, hospitality, care and generosity. Thanks are also due to my
extended family who helped me in various ways, including my search for
informants.
To my informants, thank you for opening up your homes and hearts to
me. You are my kin and ancestors, and I will always love and respect you. I
will keep you alive in writing and memory. Thanks are also due to Mr and
Mrs Adlakha for assisting me in my search for informants.
To my PhD supervisor, Thomas Strong, thank you for everything. You
have been an inspiring mentor and role model, an exemplar of the kind of
engaged anthropologist I aspire to be.
Thanks are also due to Chandana Mathur, Steve Coleman and Andrew
Finlay for having been my supervisors at different stages of my academic
journey. Your spirit animates this monograph. Thanks also to Peter van der
Veer for his invaluable feedback as the external examiner of my PhD thesis.
I bear the memory of passing my viva with zero corrections, with honour.
Thanks are also due to my academic colleagues Eamonn Slater, John Brown
and Barry Cannon for their advice and timely pep-talks at various stages of
the publication process.
xiv Acknowledgements

Thanks are also due to my whimsical Irish foster parents Ela and
Michael Kennedy; to my friends Adeen Solaiman, Mahvish Khan, Miriam
Teehan, Sara O’Rourke, Danielle Ng, Maire Ni Mhordha, and to my fellow
Reading Room Rats (especially Gabriella for the lifetime free Dropbox
space). A special thanks to Sherin and Nitin Williams – my family in
Helsinki – for their feedback on the final draft of this manuscript.
Thanks also to Romila Thapar, Tanika Sarkar, Urvashi Butalia and
Nonica Datta for taking the time to talk to me during my fieldwork. Thank
you for inspiring me with your work and words.
Thanks are due to Maynooth University, whose John and Pat Hume
Doctoral Studentship supported my PhD studies.
Last but not least, thanks to my editors Anwesha Rana and Qudsiya
Ahmed, to series editor Partha Chatterjee, the members of the series
editorial board and the three anonymous peer reviewers for believing in
this project.
 Prologue
The Linguistic Setting

The Partition of India remains the largest episode of retributive genocide

and mass displacement in history (Aiyar 1995). It is estimated that
between 200,000 and 2 million people were killed in the retributive
violence that ensued, while between 10 and 17 million people were
displaced in a haphazard transfer of population. In the process,
approximately 3.4 million refugees went missing (Brass 2003b; Khwaja,
Bharadwaj and Mian 2009). What began as a haphazard migration for
safety – as people found themselves on the ‘wrong’ side of the
border – was later formalised between India and Pakistan as a transfer
of population (Bharadwaj and Mirza 2019).
This book is an ethnography of the memory of this historical
rupture – its afterlife. It is based on 14 months of intensive fieldwork in
Delhi and its surrounding National Capital Region where I located and
worked with over 50 first-hand survivors of the 1947 Partition of India.
My research specifically focuses on Hindu refugees from the north-
western Pakistani districts of Mianwali, Dera Ghazi Khan, Dera Ismail
Khan, Bannu, Quetta (Balochistan), Multan and Mianwali. Barring a
brief trip to Dehradun, the overwhelming majority of Partition survivors
I spoke to live in Delhi and its surroundings.
For the most part my fieldwork involved drinking copious amounts
of tea with my informants as we discussed politics, history and their
everyday lives. As a project that combines oral history with participant
observation, this book relies heavily on the recording, transcription,
interpretation and translation of the words of my informants. It is for
2 Memories in the Service of the Hindu Nation

this reason that detailing the ethnic and linguistic setting of my research
gains added relevance.
Being a third-generation Partition migrant, my connection to the
Partition is deeply intimate. Delhi was the obvious site for my fieldwork
because my family’s Partition survivors and their friends are settled
there. This personal connection is visible throughout my research,
shaping my search for informants as well as my engagement with
theory. Due to the snowballing nature of my search for informants – that
branched out into the kith and kin networks of my family’s elders – all
of my informants hail from the Derajat region and the North-West
Frontier Province. All my informants were aged 80 and above at the time
of interviews (2017–2018). Most of the people who find a mention in
this book were close to 85 years of age. Roughly two-thirds of my
informants happened to be men, an accident of social relations. All of
my informants were upper-caste, middle-class and Hindu. They belonged
to a mix of castes such as Khatri, Arora, Bhatia, Malik and Brahmin.1 All
of them came from well-off zamindar families. Quite a few even owned
businesses in addition to hereditary land titles.
The stories I have documented here tell the story of the Partition as
it unfolded in this north-western region of Pakistan. The Derajat region
is located in the area where the Pakistani provinces of Punjab,
Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa (formerly North-West Frontier
Province) meet. The Derajat region is identified as a culturally distinct
region, partly due to the fact that it is home to the Saraiki language. The
historical districts of Dera Ghazi Khan, Dera Ismail Khan, Quetta,
Mianwali and Multan are most closely associated with the Derajat
region and the Saraiki language (Hashmi and Majeed 2014). However,
as my informants continuously reminded me, Saraiki is something of an
umbrella term for the closely related dialects of Derawali, Mianwali-boli
(or Mianwali dialect) and Multani. These dialects also bear a close
resemblance to Punjabi. Today, Saraiki is the major language of this
region (in Pakistan) and is spoken by approximately 25–40 million
people (Hashmi and Majeed 2014).
North-west of the Derajat region, in the North-West Frontier
Province, the main languages spoken were Pashto, Persian and Urdu.
My informants from Bannu and other remote parts of this province saw
themselves as neither Saraiki nor Punjabi, but as Pashtuns and/or
 Prologue 3

Pathans. As my key informant Pooran Chand told me, in the years

immediately following the Partition, the Frontier refugees asserted their
ethnic identity partly through their refusal to marry into Punjabi
families.
However, much has changed in the post-Independence, post-
Partition context. Although remembered by the survivors of the Partition
and some of their children, these regional identities have been
subsumed within a larger Punjabi and Indian cultural identity. The
grandchildren of Partition survivors, that is, the people of my generation,
identify as Punjabi or Delhiites or whatever other local Indian identity
they consider relevant. None of the people of my generation speak
Saraiki or any of its dialects. Among the families of my informants,
Hindi appeared to have replaced these dialects as the mother tongue.
This is in contrast to Pakistan, where Saraiki has emerged as a slow-
burning ethnic question, complete with the demand for a Saraiki
province (Butt and Ahmed 2016).
The only settings where I observed an explicit emphasis on these
(legacy) regional identities was in the activities of the organisations
formed by Partition refugees, namely the All-India Mianwali District
Association and the All-India Derawal Sahayak Sabha (‘Volunteer
Assembly’). These volunteer-based organisations were founded by
Mianwali and Derawal Partition refugees in the 1950s with the explicit
purpose of resettling their respective communities. However, by 2017
these organisations had become a mere shadow of their former selves.
Almost all of their active members were aged 60 and above, with little
to no involvement of young and middle-aged people. Although these
organisations still organised annual meet-ups for their members, the
general tone of these events can be best described by what Michael
Herzfeld (2005) once referred to as a nostalgia for real community.
Nevertheless, these organisations and their events were instrumental in
my search for informants.
As a result of these transformations in culture and identity over the
last 75 years since the Partition, my interviews and fieldwork interactions
were almost entirely conducted in Hindi. However, given the diversity
of the linguistic context of my research, other languages too often made
an appearance in the speech of my informants. At times, either for
dramatic effect or subconsciously, my informants spoke the occasional
4 Memories in the Service of the Hindu Nation

sentence or phrase in English, Urdu, Saraiki or Punjabi. Notwithstanding

such instances, Hindi was predominantly the language in which my
fieldwork was conducted.
Having been fluently bilingual in Hindi and English from an early
age, I was able to transcribe and translate my informants’ words with
ease. My larger concern around translation in this context was not
regarding my ability to convert words from one language into another.
Rather, the challenge lay in confronting translation as an added layer of
interpretation.
I have endeavoured to preserve the emic vocabulary of my informants
as far as possible. Readers will observe numerous instances in this book
where I have preserved the Hindi/Punjabi/Urdu words of my informants
and explained their meanings in accompanying commentary. I have
done this for words and phrases that do not have a direct English
translation and to convey something of the literariness or emotive
context of my informants’ speech.
Paying attention to the literariness of my informants’ speech has
also informed my engagement with theory. This is most visible in
Part II, where my analysis of the theodicical discourse of sacrifice partly
hinges on the deconstruction of the gendered connotations of my
informants’ use of the word purusharth. The translation and interpretation
of this word is part of a larger dialogue with my informants and their
memories of the Partition.
In my transliterations of these vernacular words and phrases, I have
strived for phonetic accuracy. Dispensing with the use of diacritics, I
have written these words phonetically using the Roman alphabet. There
is nothing novel or controversial about this. Almost every English-
speaking Indian netizen would have encountered such transliterations
in the form of mass-forwarded vernacular jokes. Wherever I was in
doubt regarding the ‘correct’ transliteration of a word, I merely turned
to the vast literature on South Asia for guidance. In this way, my
transliteration of vernacular words follows colloquial linguistic practices
and former scholarly transliterations. Occasionally, I also sought my
mother and my grandaunt Anjali’s advice on the translation and
transliteration of particular words.
Ultimately, by preserving some of the literariness of the speech of
my informants, I have tried to convey the individualised and personalised
 Prologue 5

tone of these narratives. There is no master narrative of the Partition.

What one finds instead is a constellation of independent voices that
contextualise, organise, localise and mobilise their memory in relation
to certain common frames of reference. As an ethnography of the last
generation of Partition survivors, I consider the documentation of this
polyphonous voicing an important scholarly objective. I hope that my
work will sustain our ongoing dialogue with the suffering and violence
in our past and present.

Note
1 I have not mentioned the specific castes of specific informants in their
introductions as part of persistent efforts to preserve their anonymity.
Some of my informants shared their last name with the name of their
caste (for example, Arora and Bhatia). I have therefore used the
somewhat generalising gloss of ‘upper-caste’ with a twofold objective:
to make the caste dynamics at play intelligible to a larger non-South
Asian non-specialist audience and to obscure biographical details.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
criterion, I may mention his separation of the sulphates of baryta and
strontia, which had 323 previously been confounded. Among crystals
which in the collections were ranked together as “heavy spar,” and
which were so perfect as to admit of accurate measurement, he
found that those which were brought from Sicily, and those of
Derbyshire, differed in their cleavage angle by three degrees and a
half. “I could not suppose,” he says, 22 “that this difference was the
effect of any law of decrement; for it would have been necessary to
suppose so rapid and complex a law, that such an hypothesis might
have been justly regarded as an abuse of the theory.” He was,
therefore, in great perplexity. But a little while previous to this,
Klaproth had discovered that there is an earth which, though in many
respects it resembles baryta, is different from it in other respects;
and this earth, from the place where it was found (in Scotland), had
been named Strontia. The French chemists had ascertained that the
two earths had, in some cases, been mixed or confounded; and
Vauquelin, on examining the Sicilian crystals, found that their base
was strontia, and not, as in the Derbyshire ones, baryta. The riddle
was now read; all the crystals with the larger angle belong to the
one, all those with the smaller, to the other, of these two sulphates;
and crystallometry was clearly recognized as an authorized test of
the difference of substances which nearly resemble each other.
22 Traité, ii. 320.

Enough has been said, probably, to enable the reader to judge

how much each of the two persons, now under review, contributed to
crystallography. It would be unwise to compare such contributions to
science with the great discoveries of astronomy and chemistry; and
we have seen how nearly the predecessors of Romé and Haüy had
reached the point of knowledge on which these two
crystallographers took their stand. But yet it is impossible not to
allow, that in these discoveries, which thus gave form and substance
to the science of crystallography, we have a manifestation of no
common sagacity and skill. Here, as in other discoveries, were
required ideas and facts;—clearness of geometrical conception
which could deal with most complex relations of form; a minute and
extensive acquaintance with actual crystals; and the talent and habit
of referring these facts to the general ideas. Haüy, in particular, was
happily endowed for his task. Without being a great mathematician,
he was sufficiently a geometer to solve all the problems which his
undertaking demanded; and though the mathematical reasoning
might have been made more compendious 324 by one who was
more at home in mathematical generalization, probably this could
hardly have been done without making the subject less accessible
and less attractive to persons moderately disciplined in mathematics.
In all his reasonings upon particular cases, Haüy is acute and clear;
while his general views appear to be suggested rather by a lively
fancy than by a sage inductive spirit: and though he thus misses the
character of a great philosopher, the vivacity of style, and felicity and
happiness of illustration, which grace his book, and which agree well
with the character of an Abbé of the old French monarchy, had a
great and useful influence on the progress of the subject.

Unfortunately Romé de Lisle and Haüy were not only rivals, but in
some measure enemies. The former might naturally feel some
vexation at finding himself, in his later years (he died in 1790),
thrown into shade by his more brilliant successor. In reference to
Haüy’s use of cleavage, he speaks 23 of “innovators in
crystallography, who may properly be called crystalloclasts.” Yet he
adopted, in great measure, the same views of the formation of
crystals by laminæ, 24 which Haüy illustrated by the destructive
process at which he thus sneers. His sensitiveness was kept alive by
the conduct of the Academy of Sciences, which took no notice of him
and his labors; 25 probably because it was led by Buffon, who
disliked Linnæus, and might dislike Romé as his follower; and who,
as we have seen, despised crystallography. Haüy revenged himself
by rarely mentioning Romé in his works, though it was manifest that
his obligations to him were immense; and by recording his errors
while he corrected them. More fortunate than his rival, Haüy was,
from the first, received with favor and applause. His lectures at Paris
were eagerly listened to by persons from all quarters of the world.
His views were, in this manner, speedily diffused; and the subject
was soon pursued, in various ways, by mathematicians and
mineralogists in every country of Europe.
23 Pref. p. xxvii.

24 T. ii. p. 21.

25 Marx. Gesch. d. Cryst. 130.

 CHAPTER III.

Reception and Corrections of the Hauïan Crystallography.

I HAVE not hitherto noticed the imperfections of the crystallographic

views and methods of Haüy, because my business in the last
section 325 was to mark the permanent additions he made to the
science. His system did, however, require completion and
rectification in various points; and in speaking of the
crystallographers of the subsequent time, who may all be considered
as the cultivators of the Hauïan doctrines, we must also consider
what they did in correcting them.

The three main points in which this improvement was needed

were;—a better determination of the crystalline forms of the special
substances;—a more general and less arbitrary method of
considering crystalline forms according to their symmetry; and a
detection of more general conditions by which the crystalline angle is
regulated. The first of these processes may be considered as the
natural sequel of the Hauïan epoch: the other two must be treated as
separate steps of discovery.

When it appeared that the angle of natural or of cleavage faces

could be used to determine the differences of minerals, it became
important to measure this angle with accuracy. Haüy’s
measurements were found very inaccurate by many succeeding
crystallographers: Mohs says 26 that they are so generally
inaccurate, that no confidence can be placed in them. This was said,
of course, according to the more rigorous notions of accuracy to
which the establishment of Haüy’s system led. Among the persons
who principally labored in ascertaining, with precision, the crystalline
angles of minerals, were several Englishmen, especially Wollaston,
Phillips, and Brooke. Wollaston, by the invention of his Reflecting
Goniometer, placed an entirely new degree of accuracy within the
reach of the crystallographer; the angle of two faces being, in this
instrument, measured by means of the reflected images of bright
objects seen in them, so that the measure is the more accurate the
more minute the faces are. In the use of this instrument, no one was
more laborious and successful than William Phillips, whose power of
apprehending the most complex forms with steadiness and
clearness, led Wollaston to say that he had “a geometrical sense.”
Phillips published a Treatise on Mineralogy, containing a great
collection of such determinations; and Mr. Brooke, a crystallographer
of the same exact and careful school, has also published several
works of the same kind. The precise measurement of crystalline
angles must be the familiar employment of all who study
crystallography; and, therefore, any further enumeration of those 326
who have added in this way to the stock of knowledge, would be
superfluous.
26 Marx. p. 153.

Nor need I dwell long on those who added to the knowledge which
Haüy left, of derived forms. The most remarkable work of this kind
was that of Count Bournon, who published a work on a single
mineral (calcspar) in three quarto volumes. 27 He has here given
representations of seven hundred forms of crystals, of which,
however, only fifty-six are essentially different. From this example the
reader may judge what a length of time, and what a number of
observers and calculators, were requisite to exhaust the subject.
27 Traité complet de la Chaux Carbonatée et d’Aragonite, par M.
le Comte de Bournon. London, 1808.
 If the calculations, thus occasioned, had been conducted upon the
basis of Haüy’s system, without any further generalization, they
would have belonged to that process, the natural sequel of inductive
discoveries, which we call deduction; and would have needed only a
very brief notice here. But some additional steps were made in the
upward road to scientific truth, and of these we must now give an
account.
 CHAPTER IV.

Establishment of the Distinction of Systems of Crystallization.—Weiss

and Mohs.

I Ntrue,Haüy’s views, as generally happens in new systems, however

there was involved something that was arbitrary, something
that was false or doubtful, something that was unnecessarily limited.
The principal points of this kind were;—his having made the laws of
crystalline derivation depend so much upon cleavage;—his having
assumed an atomic constitution of bodies as an essential part of his
system; and his having taken a set of primary forms, which, being
selected by no general view, were partly superfluous, and partly
defective.

How far evidence, such as has been referred to by various

philosophers, has proved, or can prove, that bodies are constituted
of indivisible atoms, will be more fully examined in the work which
treats of the Philosophy of this subject. There can be little doubt that
the 327 portion of Haüy’s doctrine which most riveted popular
attention and applause, was his dissection of crystals, in a manner
which was supposed to lead actually to their ultimate material
elements. Yet it is clear, that since the solids given by cleavage are,
in many cases, such as cannot make up a solid space, the primary
conception of a necessary geometrical identity between the results
of division and the elements of composition, which is the sole
foundation of the supposition that crystallography points out the
actual elements, disappears on being scrutinized: and when Haüy,
pressed by this difficulty, as in the case of fluor-spar, put his integrant
octohedral molecules together, touching by the edges only, his
method became an empty geometrical diagram, with no physical
meaning.

The real fact, divested of the hypothesis which was contained in

the fiction of decrements, was, that when the relation of the
derivative to the primary faces is expressed by means of numerical
indices, these numbers are integers, and generally very small ones;
and this was the form which the law gradually assumed, as the
method of derivation was made more general and simple by Weiss
and others.

“When, in 1809, I published my Dissertation,” says Weiss, 28 “I

shared the common opinion as to the necessity of the assumption
and the reality of the existence of a primitive form, at least in a sense
not very different from the usual sense of the expression. While I
sought,” he adds, referring to certain doctrines of general philosophy
which he and others entertained, “a dynamical ground for this,
instead of the untenable atomistic view, I found that, out of my
primitive forms, there was gradually unfolded to my hands, that
which really governs them, and is not affected by their casual
fluctuations, the fundamental relations of those Dimensions
according to which a multiplicity of internal oppositions, necessarily
and mutually interdependent, are developed in the mass, each
having its own polarity; so that the crystalline character is co-
extensive with these polarities.”
28 Mem. Acad. Berl. 1816, p. 307.

The “Dimensions” of which Weiss here speaks, are the Axes of

Symmetry of the crystal; that is, those lines in reference to which,
every face is accompanied by other faces, having like positions and
properties. Thus a rhomb, or more properly a rhombohedron, 29 of
328 calcspar may be placed with one of its obtuse corners
uppermost, so that all the three faces which meet there are equally
inclined to the vertical line. In this position, every derivative face,
which is obtained by any modification of the faces or edges of the
rhombohedron, implies either three or six such derivative faces; for
no one of the three upper faces of the rhombohedron has any
character or property different from the other two; and, therefore,
there is no reason for the existence of a derivative from one of these
primitive faces, which does not equally hold for the other primitive
faces. Hence the derivative forms will, in all cases, contain none but
faces connected by this kind of correspondence. The axis thus made
vertical will be an Axis of Symmetry, and the crystal will consist of
three divisions, ranged round this axis, and exactly resembling each
other. According to Weiss’s nomenclature, such a crystal is “three-
and-three-membered.”
29 I use this name for the solid figure, since rhomb has always
been used for a plane figure.

But this is only one of the kinds of symmetry which crystalline

forms may exhibit. They may have three axes of complete and equal
symmetry at right angles to each other, as the cube and the regular
octohedron;—or, two axes of equal symmetry, perpendicular to each
other and to a third axis, which is not affected with the same
symmetry with which they are; such a figure is a square pyramid;—
or they may have three rectangular axes, all of unequal symmetry,
the modifications referring to each axis separately from the other
two.

These are essential and necessary distinctions of crystalline form;

and the introduction of a classification of forms founded on such
relations, or, as they were called, Systems of Crystallization, was a
great improvement upon the divisions of the earlier
crystallographers, for those divisions were separated according to
certain arbitrarily-assumed primary forms. Thus Romé de Lisle’s
fundamental forms were, the tetrahedron, the cube, the octohedron,
the rhombic prism, the rhombic octohedron, the dodecahedron with
triangular faces: Haüy’s primary forms are the cube, the
rhombohedron, the oblique rhombic prism, the right rhombic prism,
the rhombic dodecahedron, the regular octohedron, tetrahedron, and
six-sided prism, and the bipyramidal dodecahedron. This division, as
I have already said, errs both by excess and defect, for some of
these primary forms might be made derivatives from others; and no
solid reason could be assigned why they were not. Thus the cube
may be derived from the tetrahedron, by truncating the edges; and
the rhombic dodecahedron again from the cube, by truncating its
edges; while the square pyramid could not be legitimately identified
with the derivative of any of these forms; for if we were to 329 derive
it from the rhombic prism, why should the acute angles always suffer
decrements corresponding in a certain way to those of the obtuse
angles, as they must do in order to give rise to a square pyramid?

The introduction of the method of reference to Systems of

Crystallization has been a subject of controversy, some ascribing this
valuable step to Weiss, and some to Mohs. 30 It appears, I think, on
the whole, that Weiss first published works in which the method is
employed; but that Mohs, by applying it to all the known species of
minerals, has had the merit of making it the basis of real
crystallography. Weiss, in 1809, published a Dissertation On the
mode of investigating the principal geometrical character of
crystalline forms, in which he says, 31 “No part, line, or quantity, is so
important as the axis; no consideration is more essential or of a
higher order than the relation of a crystalline plane to the axis;” and
again, “An axis is any line governing the figure, about which all parts
are similarly disposed, and with reference to which they correspond
mutually.” This he soon followed out by examination of some difficult
cases, as Felspar and Epidote. In the Memoirs of the Berlin
Academy, 32 for 1814–15, he published An Exhibition of the natural
Divisions of Systems of Crystallization. In this Memoir, his divisions
are as follows:—The regular system, the four-membered, the two-
and-two-membered, the three-and-three-membered, and some
others of inferior degrees of symmetry. These divisions are by Mohs
(Outlines of Mineralogy, 1822), termed the tessular, pyramidal,
prismatic, and rhombohedral systems respectively. Hausmann, in his
Investigations concerning the Forms of Inanimate Nature, 33 makes a
nearly corresponding arrangement;—the isometric, monodimetric,
trimetric, and monotrimetic; and one or other of these sets of terms
have been adopted by most succeeding writers.
30 Edin. Phil. Trans. 1823, vols. xv. and xvi.

31 pp. 16, 42.

32 Ibid.

33 Göttingen, 1821.

In order to make the distinctions more apparent, I have purposely

omitted to speak of the systems which arise when the prismatic
system loses some part of its symmetry;—when it has only half or a
quarter its complete number of faces;—or, according to Mohs’s
phraseology, when it is hemihedral or tetartohedral. Such systems
are represented by the singly-oblique or doubly-oblique prism; they
are termed by Weiss two-and-one-membered, and one-and-one-
membered; by other writers, Monoklinometric, and Triklinometric
Systems. There are also other 330 peculiarities of Symmetry, such,
for instance, as that of the plagihedral faces of quartz, and other
minerals.

The introduction of an arrangement of crystalline forms into

systems, according to their degree of symmetry, was a step which
was rather founded on a distinct and comprehensive perception of
mathematical relations, than on an acquaintance with experimental
facts, beyond what earlier mineralogists had possessed. This
arrangement was, however, remarkably confirmed by some of the
properties of minerals which attracted notice about the time now
spoken of, as we shall see in the next chapter.

~Additional material in the 3rd edition.~

 CHAPTER V.

Reception and Confirmation of the Distinction of Systems of

Crystallization.

D IFFUSION of the Distinction of Systems.—The distinction of

systems of crystallization was so far founded on obviously true
views, that it was speedily adopted by most mineralogists. I need not
dwell on the steps by which this took place. Mr. Haidinger’s
translation of Mohs was a principal occasion of its introduction in
England. As an indication of dates, bearing on this subject, perhaps I
may be allowed to notice, that there appeared in the Philosophical
Transactions for 1825, A General Method of Calculating the Angles
of Crystals, which I had written, and in which I referred only to Haüy’s
views; but that in 1826, 34 I published a Memoir On the Classification
of Crystalline Combinations, founded on the methods of Weiss and
Mohs, especially the latter; with which I had in the mean time
become acquainted, and which appeared to me to contain their own
evidence and recommendation. General methods, such as was
attempted in the Memoir just quoted, are part of that process in the
history of sciences, by which, when the principles are once
established, the mathematical operation of deducing their
consequences is made more and more general and symmetrical:
which we have seen already exemplified in the history of celestial
mechanics after the time of Newton. It does not enter into our plan,
to dwell upon the various steps in this way 331 made by Levy,
Naumann, Grassmann, Kupffer, Hessel, and by Professor Miller
among ourselves. I may notice that one great improvement was, the
method introduced by Monteiro and Levy, of determining the laws of
derivation of forces by means of the parallelisms of edges; which
was afterwards extended so that faces were considered as
belonging to zones. Nor need I attempt to enumerate (what indeed it
would be difficult to describe in words) the various methods of
notation by which it has been proposed to represent the faces of
crystals, and to facilitate the calculations which have reference to
them.
34 Camb. Trans. vol. ii. p. 391.

[2nd Ed.] [My Memoir of 1825 depended on the views of Haüy in

so far as that I started from his “primitive forms;” but being a general
method of expressing all forms by co-ordinates, it was very little
governed by these views. The mode of representing crystalline forms
which I proposed seemed to contain its own evidence of being more
true to nature than Haüy’s theory of decrements, inasmuch as my
method expressed the faces at much lower numbers. I determine a
face by means of the dimensions of the primary form divided by
certain numbers; Haüy had expressed the face virtually by the same
dimensions multiplied by numbers. In cases where my notation gives
such numbers as (3, 4, 1), (1, 3, 7), (5, 1, 19), his method involves
the higher numbers (4, 3, 12), (21, 7, 3), (19, 95, 5). My method
however has, I believe, little value as a method of “calculating the
angles of crystals.”

M. Neumann, of Königsberg, introduced a very convenient and

elegant mode of representing the position of faces of crystals by
corresponding points on the surface of a circumscribing sphere. He
gave (in 1823) the laws of the derivation of crystalline faces,
expressed geometrically by the intersection of zones, (Beiträge zur
Krystallonomie.) The same method of indicating the position of faces
of crystals was afterwards, together with the notation, re-invented by
M. Grassmann, (Zur Krystallonomie und Geometrischen
Combinationslehre, 1829.) Aiding himself by the suggestions of
these writers, and partly adopting my method, Prof. Miller has
produced a work on Crystallography remarkable for mathematical
elegance and symmetry; and has given expressions really useful for
calculating the angles of crystalline faces, (A Treatise on
Crystallography. Cambridge, 1839.)]

Confirmation of the Distinction of Systems by the Optical

Properties of Minerals.—Brewster.—I must not omit to notice the
striking confirmation which the distinction of systems of
crystallization received from optical discoveries, especially those of
Sir D. Brewster. Of the 332 history of this very rich and beautiful
department of science, we have already given some account, in
speaking of Optics. The first facts which were noticed, those relating
to double refraction, belonged exclusively to crystals of the
rhombohedral system. The splendid phenomena of the rings and
lemniscates produced by dipolarizing crystals, were afterwards
discovered; and these were, in 1817, classified by Sir David
Brewster, according to the crystalline forms to which they belong.
This classification, on comparison with the distinction of Systems of
Crystallization, resolved itself into a necessary relation of
mathematical symmetry: all crystals of the pyramidal and
rhombohedral systems, which from their geometrical character have
a single axis of symmetry, are also optically uniaxal, and produce by
dipolarization circular rings; while the prismatic system, which has no
such single axis, but three unequal axes of symmetry, is optically
biaxal, gives lemniscates by dipolarized light, and according to
Fresnel’s theory, has three rectangular axes of unequal elasticity.
 [2nd Ed.] [I have placed Sir David Brewster’s arrangement of
crystalline forms in this chapter, as an event belonging to the
confirmation of the distinctions of forms introduced by Weiss and
Mohs; because that arrangement was established, not on
crystallographical, but on optical grounds. But Sir David Brewster’s
optical discovery was a much greater step in science than the
systems of the two German crystallographers; and even in respect to
the crystallographical principle, Sir D. Brewster had an independent
share in the discovery. He divided crystalline forms into three
classes, enumerating the Hauïan “primitive forms” which belonged to
each; and as he found some exceptions to this classification, (such
as idocrase, &c.,) he ventured to pronounce that in those substances
the received primitive forms were probably erroneous; a judgment
which was soon confirmed by a closer crystallographical scrutiny. He
also showed his perception of the mineralogical importance of his
discovery by publishing it, not only in the Phil. Trans. (1818), but also
in the Transactions of the Wernerian Society of Natural History. In a
second paper inserted in this later series, read in 1820, he further
notices Mohs’s System of Crystallography, which had then recently
appeared, and points out its agreement with his own.

Another reason why I do not make his great optical discovery a

cardinal point in the history of crystallography is, that as a
crystallographical system it is incomplete. Although we are thus led
to distinguish the tessular and the prismatic systems (using Mohs’s
terms) 333 from the rhombohedral and the square prismatic, we are
not led to distinguish the latter two from each other; inasmuch as
they have no optical difference of character. But this distinction is
quite essential in crystallography; for these two systems have faces
formed by laws as different as those of the other two systems.
 Moreover, Weiss and Mohs not only divided crystalline forms into
certain classes, but showed that by doing this, the derivation of all
the existing forms from the fundamental ones assumed a new aspect
of simplicity and generality; and this was the essential part of what
they did.

On the other hand, I do not think it is too much to say as I have

elsewhere said 35 that “Sir D. Brewster’s optical experiments must
have led to a classification of crystals into the above systems, or
something nearly equivalent, even if crystals had not been so
arranged by attention to their forms.”]
35 Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, B. viii. C. iii. Art. 3.

Many other most curious trains of research have confirmed the

general truth, that the degree and kind of geometrical symmetry
corresponds exactly with the symmetry of the optical properties. As
an instance of this, eminently striking for its singularity, we may
notice the discovery of Sir John Herschel, that the plagihedral
crystallization of quartz, by which it exhibits faces twisted to the right
or the left, is accompanied by right-handed or left-handed circular
polarization respectively. No one acquainted with the subject can
now doubt, that the correspondence of geometrical and optical
symmetry is of the most complete and fundamental kind.

[2nd Ed.] [Our knowledge with respect to the positions of the

optical axes of the oblique prismatic crystals is still imperfect. It
appears to be ascertained that, in singly oblique crystals, one of the
axes of optical elasticity coincides with the rectangular
crystallographic axis. In doubly oblique crystals, one of the axes of
optical elasticity is, in many cases, coincident with the axis of a
principal zone. I believe no more determinate laws have been
discovered.]

Thus the highest generalization at which mathematical

crystallographers have yet arrived, may be considered as fully
established; and the science of Crystallography, in the condition in
which these place it, is fit to be employed as one of the members of
Mineralogy, and thus to fill its appropriate place and office.

~Additional material in the 3rd edition.~ 334

 CHAPTER VI.

Correction of the Law of the same Angle for the same Substance.

D ISCOVERY of Isomorphism. Mitscherlich.—The discovery

of which we now have to speak may appear at first sight too
large to be included in the history of crystallography, and may seem
to belong rather to chemistry. But it is to be recollected that
crystallography, from the time of its first assuming importance in the
hands of Haüy, founded its claim to notice entirely upon its
connexion with chemistry; crystalline forms were properties of
something; but what that something was, and how it might be
modified without becoming something else, no crystallographer
could venture to decide, without the aid of chemical analysis. Haüy
had assumed, as the general result of his researches, that the same
chemical elements, combined in the same proportions, would always
exhibit the same crystalline form; and reciprocally, that the same
form and angles (except in the obvious case of the tessular system,
in which the angles are determined by its being the tessular system,)
implied the same chemical constitution. But this dogma could only be
considered as an approximate conjecture; for there were many
glaring and unexplained exceptions to it. The explanation of several
of these was beautifully described by the discovery that there are
various elements which are isomorphous to each other; that is, such
that one may take the place of another without altering the crystalline
form; and thus the chemical composition may be much changed,
while the crystallographic character is undisturbed.

This truth had been caught sight of, probably as a guess only, by
Fuchs as early as 1815. In speaking of a mineral which had been
called Gehlenite, he says, “I hold the oxide of iron, not for an
essential component part of this genus, but only as a vicarious
element, replacing so much lime. We shall find it necessary to
consider the results of several analyses of mineral bodies in this
point of view, if we wish, on the one hand, to bring them into
agreement with the doctrine of chemical proportions, and on the
other, to avoid unnecessarily splitting up genera.” In a lecture On the
Mutual Influence of 335 Chemistry and Mineralogy, 36 he again draws
attention to his term vicarious (vicarirende), which undoubtedly
expresses the nature of the general law afterwards established by
Mitscherlich in 1822.
36 Munich, 1820.

But Fuchs’s conjectural expression was only a prelude to

Mitscherlich’s experimental discovery of isomorphism. Till many
careful analyses had given substance and signification to this
conception of vicarious elements, it was of small value. Perhaps no
one was more capable than Berzelius of turning to the best
advantage any ideas which were current in the chemical world; yet
we find him, 37 in 1820, dwelling upon a certain vague view of these
cases,—that “oxides which contain equal doses of oxygen must
have their general properties common;” without tracing it to any
definite conclusions. But his scholar, Mitscherlich, gave this
proposition a real crystallographical import. Thus he found that the
carbonates of lime (calcspar,) of magnesia, of protoxide of iron, and
of protoxide of manganese, agree in many respects of form, while
the homologous angles vary through one or two degrees only; so
again the carbonates of baryta, strontia, lead, and lime (arragonite),
agree nearly; the different kinds of felspar vary only by the
substitution of one alkali for another; the phosphates are almost